Settings Reference

All store-wide settings live in WooCommerce > Settings > Returns. The tab has five sections, shown as links under the tab title: General, Rules, Labels (Pro), Emails and Advanced. Product and category overrides are described at the end of this page.

Fields that only exist in the Pro edition are marked Pro. In the Lite edition they are not shown, and a value saved while Pro was active has no effect in Lite: Lite uses the defaults (no restocking fee, the default shipping payer, no automatic approval, no country windows, no warranty, no credit bonus, no keep-below amount, same-price exchanges with free shipping). The saved values are kept, and saving the Lite settings keeps the Pro choices of Allowed resolutions and Return methods, so moving back to Pro restores your configuration. When none of the stored resolutions exists in Lite, Lite offers a refund.

General

The first group is titled ReturnDesk settings.

Field	Default	What it does
Return window (days)	30	Days customers have to request a return, from 0 to 3650. With 0, returns are not accepted (the EU withdrawal right below still applies when it is switched on). Products and categories can override it.
Count the window from	Order completed	Order completed, Order placed or Delivery date. See "How the window is counted" below.
Apply the EU 14-day withdrawal right	On	For billing addresses in an EU country, always allow a refund for 14 days, even when your own window is shorter.
Final sale product tag	final-sale	A product tag. Products that have it cannot be returned. Choose None to turn the tag rule off.

Return address

The second group holds the address customers send parcels to. It is shown in the approval email and on the return page. The fields are Name, Company, Address line 1, Address line 2, City, Postcode, Country and Phone. The country must be a two-letter code such as GR or DE; any other value is rejected and the previous address is kept.

How the window is counted

• Order completed starts the window on the day the order status became Completed. If the order has no completion date, the order date is used.
• Order placed starts it on the order date. This is the only choice that also lets customers return an order that is still Processing. With the other two choices an order must be Completed.
• Delivery date starts it on the latest delivery date recorded on a WooCommerce Fulfillments shipment of the order. Without a delivery date it falls back to the completion date, then to the order date.

Only orders that are Completed or Processing can be returned. Each order line is checked on its own, so one expired item does not block the rest of the order.

EU withdrawal right

When the box is ticked and the order is billed to one of the 27 EU member states, the window is the longer of your own window and 14 days from delivery (or from completion or the order date when there is no delivery date). During those 14 days a refund is always on offer, even if you do not allow refunds in general, and customers may leave the reason empty ("I would rather not say").

A return requested during those 14 days also gets the refund rules of the withdrawal right, in both editions:

• No restocking fee is withheld, whatever your fee settings say.
• When the return brings back the last units of the order, the original standard delivery charge (the shipping lines of the order with their tax) is added to the refund as its own line, Original delivery charge refunded (EU withdrawal). You can lower it in the resolve form before you press Resolve, never raise it. It is refunded on the shipping lines of the order.
• With a Store credit resolution (Pro) nothing is refunded, so that delivery charge goes into the credit at face value instead, and the delivery charge field is not shown. The store credit bonus applies to the items only, never to the delivery charge.

What counts is the moment of the request, not of the resolve: a return requested on day 13 and inspected on day 20 still gets these rules. The return shipping the customer pays (your return shipping rule) is still withheld.

Rules

The group is titled Return rules.

Field	Default	What it does
Allowed resolutions	Refund, Store credit, Exchange	What customers can ask for. Options: Refund, Store credit (Pro), Exchange, Warranty claim (Pro). Lite offers Refund and Exchange; a Lite exchange is for another variation of the same product at the same price. At least one choice is required.
Return methods	Prepaid return label, Customer ships with their own label	How the parcel comes back. Options: Customer ships with their own label, Prepaid return label (Pro), Drop-off point (Pro), Return in store (Pro), Customer keeps the item (Pro). Lite offers the customer's own label only. At least one choice is required.
Return reasons	Eight built-in reasons	One reason per line, see below.
Require photos for these reasons	Arrived damaged, Defective or not working, Received the wrong item	Customers must attach at least one photo for these reasons.
Require inspection before resolving	On	When on, a received return waits for an inspection. When off, a received return is inspected automatically with every unit accepted.
Instructions for customer-supplied labels	A short packing instruction	Shown to customers who ship the parcel themselves.

The Pro-only group Fees, shipping and automation follows in the same section.

Return reasons

Reasons are edited as text, one reason per line:

code|label|requires_photo|defective|enabled

• code is 2 to 40 characters of a-z, 0-9 and underscore. It is stored on every return, so do not rename a code that is in use.
• label is what customers see.
• requires_photo, defective and enabled are 1 or 0. If you leave them out they default to 0, 0 and 1.
• A defective reason is free of restocking fees, and counts as a defect for the "Merchant when the item is defective" shipping rule.
• Set enabled to 0 to hide a reason from new requests. Deleting a built-in line brings it back.
• At least one reason must stay enabled. If any line is invalid, the whole list is rejected with a message that names the line, and the previous list is kept.

The built-in reasons are wrong_size, not_as_described, damaged, defective, changed_mind, wrong_item, late_delivery and other. The requires_photo column and the Require photos for these reasons field control the same thing: change either one and the other follows.

Fees, shipping and automation (Pro)

Field	Default	What it does
Store credit bonus (%)	0	Extra credit on top of the refundable amount when the customer picks store credit.
Let customers keep items below this amount	0 (off)	Order lines worth this much or less can be kept by the customer, with no parcel sent back. It only works when Customer keeps the item is one of the allowed return methods. 0 turns it off.
Restocking fee type	No fee	No fee, Fixed amount per item or Percentage of the line total.
Restocking fee value	0	The amount or the percentage. Not charged for defective reasons, nor during the EU withdrawal period. A return keeps the fee it was requested with: changing the fee later does not change the returns already requested.
Who pays return shipping	Merchant when the item is defective	Merchant, Merchant when the item is defective or Customer. When the customer pays, the cost of a label you bought is withheld from the refund.
Approve eligible requests automatically	Off	Requests that pass every rule are approved without waiting for a person.
Automatic approval limit	0	Larger requests wait for a person. 0 means no limit.
Return window by country	Empty	One country per line as CC:days, for example DE:14. Replaces the store window for orders billed to that country. A window set on a product or category wins over it.
Exchange price rule	Same price only	Same price only or Allow a price difference. See Pro features.
Exchange shipping	Free	Free, Same as the original order or Calculate at current rates.

Labels (Pro)

Field	What it does
Return label provider	Customer ships with their own label (default), Manual upload or EasyPost. With Manual upload nothing is bought: an approved prepaid-label return asks you, on its return screen, to upload the label PDF.
EasyPost API key, EasyPost webhook secret	Credentials for EasyPost and the secret that signs its tracking webhooks.

Credentials are stored encrypted. Under each webhook field the screen prints the exact webhook address for your site. Setup steps are on Labels and carriers.

Emails

This section only points to WooCommerce > Settings > Emails. The return emails are WooCommerce emails: you switch them on or off, change the recipients, and edit the subject, heading and extra text there. The emails are listed in Customer flow.

Advanced

Field	Default	What it does
Delete all data when the plugin is uninstalled	Off	Removes the returns, credits, photos and settings when you delete the plugin. This cannot be undone. See Uninstall.
Guest access link validity (days) (Pro)	30	How long the link in a guest portal email works. At least 1.
Store credit expiry (days) (Pro)	365	Credit issued from now on expires after this many days. 0 means it never expires.
Close unreturned approved requests after (days) (Pro)	30	Approved returns that the customer was expected to ship but did not are cancelled this many days after approval. Returns with a purchased label are never closed automatically. 0 turns it off.

Product and category rules

Open a product and choose the Returns tab in the product data box, or edit a product category.

Field	Where	What it does
Return window (days)	Product, category	Replaces the store window. Leave empty to use the store setting.
Cannot be returned	Product, category	On a product this is a choice: Inherit (follow the category and the store), Can be returned (allow returns even if the category is non-returnable) or Cannot be returned. On a category it is a checkbox.
Final sale	Product	The product cannot be returned.
Warranty (days) (Pro)	Product, category	Days of warranty, counted from the same start date as the return window. After the window ends, a customer can still make a warranty claim until the warranty ends.
Allowed resolutions (Pro)	Product	Limits what customers can ask for on this product.

How the rules combine:

• A product setting wins over its category, and a category setting wins over the store settings.
• A product in several categories gets the most restrictive value: the shortest window, and non-returnable if any category says so.
• When a customer selects several items, the wizard only offers the resolutions and return methods that every selected item allows. If there is nothing in common, the customer is asked to return the items in separate requests.
• If an item cannot be returned, the customer sees the reason on the wizard page: the return period has ended, every unit is already part of a return or a refund, or the item is not returnable.